The iOS App Store has half a million apps already. On top of that, it wasn’t designed with books in mind. How do you get your book app noticed in such a hostile environment? In this session, Robot Media’s Head Robot Hermés Piqué shares his experience in dealing with the discovery of book apps, and provides a series of best practices to give your app a fighting chance.

1. The Discovery Problem
@hpique

2. 600,000 apps
in the iTunes App Store

3. “About 63% of App
Store downloads
come from rankings”
Source: Nielsen

4. “the average gain [of
getting featured in
rankings] is +27 in iPad
and +15 in iPhone”
Source: Distimo

5. 1.
rankings <=> featured
2.
profit!

6. how to get featured?

8. how to get into the rankings?

10. Questions?

11. oh...

12. poor man’s guide
to solve book app discovery
•why a book app?
•the icon
•keywords
•coding discovery

13. book apps
2nd category in volume

14. book apps
6th (?) in revenue

15. know thy enemy

16. category

17. search

18. detail

19. the icon

20. ...is the most important design
element of an app

21. icon design
•Simple...but detailed
•Tell a story...
•...without words (remember the app name is there too)
•Standard = bad
•Stand out

22. keywords
does search
like does tablets

23. keywords 101
•100 characters
•Do not include title and company name
•Separate with commas
•Be specific

24. keywords 201
•Test keywords and adjust
•Separate with “,” but not “, ” to save
chars
•Include singular and plurals
•Not necessary to combine keywords

25. keywords 301
•Use Google Keywords Tool for ideas
•In-app purchase titles count as
keywords (?)
•Include common misspellings

26. developers
can help too!

27. code discovery
into your app
•virality
•cross-promotion
•app size
•vote reminder

28. virality
•Let the app help discover itself
•Share content through Facebook, Twitter
or e-mail
•Include the app link in each outgoing
message (cross-platform apps should use an
“intelligent” link)

29. cross-promotion
•Build a network of apps
•Be helpful: do not recommend an app I
already have (for devs: canOpenURL)

30. app size
Between
“as small as possible”
and
20MB
50MB
(use remote assets)

31. vote reminders
•Do not spam
•After “positive” experience
•See: github.com/arashpayan/
appirater

32. Questions?
@hpique

33. Thanks!